October 31, 2011, after 33 seasons as a major league manager. La Russa later came out of retirement and served as manager of the Chicago White Sox in 2021 and 2022. La Russa had previously led the Cardinals () and Oakland Athletics () to World Series championships. Former Cardinals catcher Mike Matheny, who played for the Cardinals that lost the World Series, was hired to replace him. After the New York Giants won Super Bowl XLVI during the offseason, some news organizations, among them The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, compared the Cardinals to the Giants, invoking Al Michaels's call of the Giants winning the Super Bowl: "The New York Giants, given the last rites by many in December, are the Super Bowl Champs in February." The Rangers became the first team to lose in the World Series in consecutive years since the Atlanta Braves in and and the first American League team to do so since the New York Yankees in and . Albert Pujols and C. J. Wilson would later end up signing with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the offseason, in one of the deepest free-agent classes in recent MLB history, while the Rangers obtained the rights to sign Japanese star pitcher Yu Darvish to replace Wilson. In his first press conference as a Ranger, Darvish was asked about Game 6 of the World Series where David Freese hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 11th, and said "If it was last year [2011], I would have given up a home run and lost the game. This year [2012] I won't let that happen." Pujols returned to the Cardinals in 2022, which was the last season of his career. Both teams would advance into the postseason again in the following year, both as wild cards. The Rangers lost to the Baltimore Orioles in the inaugural American League Wild Card game, and would not make the postseason again until 2015. The Cardinals won the inaugural National League Wild Card game against Atlanta. They then defeated the Washington Nationals in the NLDS before falling to the San Francisco Giants in the NLCS. St. Louis would return to the World Series in , continuing the pattern of Giants and Cardinals exchanging pennant victories. However, the Cardinals lost to the Boston Red Sox in six games before losing to San Francisco again in the 2014 NLCS, 4 games